FTW94FA014 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From 1M1 · Little Rock, AR to F71 · Fort Worth, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW94FA014
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 4 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N98143
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 1M1 · Little Rock, ARTo F71 · Fort Worth, TX
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- In flight encounter with weather
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Texarkana, AR, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THERE IS NO RECORD THAT THE NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PILOT OBTAINED A WEATHER BRIEFING FOR THE 306 MILE NIGHT CROSS-COUNTRY FLIGHT. APPROX 127 MILES FROM THE POINT OF DEPARTURE THE AIRPLANE IMPACTED TREES AND TERRAIN. CONVECTIVE SIGMETS AND AIRMETS WERE IN EFFECT FOR THE ROUTE OF FLIGHT. THE WEATHER AT THE ACCIDENT SITE WAS REPORTED TO BE 200-300 FT OVERCAST, WITH VISIBILITIES LESS THAN 3 MI IN FOG. RECORDED RADAR DATA SHOWS THAT THE AVERAGE ALTITUDE OF THE FLIGHT WAS 1,500 FT MSL. ON THE LAST RADAR CONTACT THE AIRPLANE WAS AT AN ALTITUDE OF 800 FT. THE ELEVATION OF THE ACCIDENT SITE WAS 400 FT.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S CONTINUED VFR FLIGHT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS. FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO OBTAIN A WEATHER BRIEFING, THE EXISTING WEATHER, HIS LACK OF INSTRUMENT FLYING EXPERIENCE, AND THE DARK NIGHT CONDITION.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW94FA014
- Event ID
- 20001211X13554
- Case number
- FTW94FA014
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1993-10-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6780e305123e83d0681360e76f060cea89a2a6b2e0abba6016e1c7cada5f9e8f; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:20:41.127Z.